Walter Bagehot: “They defer to what we may call the THEATRICAL SHOW of society.”

The United States could not have become monarchical, even if the Constitutional Convention had decreed it, even if the component States had ratified it.

If the above reasoning be sound, compulsory constituencies are necessary, voluntary constituencies destructive; the optional transferability of votes is not a salutary aid, but a ruinous innovation.

That a House of Commons may work well it must perform, as we saw, five functions well: it must elect a Ministry well, legislate well, teach the nation well, express the nation's will well, bring matters to the nation's attention well.

There is no ELASTIC element, everything is rigid, specified, dated.